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The Reason for the Electoral College (www.theepochtimes.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] Zeppo 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

A popular vote is something people who do understand the Constitution or the power of the states.

I can't parse that sentence.

Being president isn’t about being popular. It is about the states picking the person to represent them.
We are a representative government. We are not a boy band where popularity matters.

What? Within each state it's a popularity contest.

So you're saying popular vote or 'boy band popularity contest' is fine within each state, but not for the whole nation at once? What's the difference other than that the electoral college is imprecise? We have to disproportionately select electors where people in North Dakota count 3x as much as people in Texas or California? Why's that? The Senate is already bad enough where 30 million people in Texas get the same weight as 4 million people in Oregon or 700,000 in North Dakota. I don't see why selecting electors by popular vote and then having them vote makes any difference other than as a charade to pretend states are independent.

The idea that the US is a coalition of independent states made sense over 150 years ago or 250 years ago, but not so much now. As much as say, some idiots in Texas fantasize about it, states are not free to leave the US and it's no different than any country made up of provinces.

I would be more fine with the electoral college if the number of electors was updated to match growing populations. The system also is super lame in how it makes the entire election come down to tens of thousands of votes in 'swing states'.

[+] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] Zeppo 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm obviously aware of electors. They're selected by what you called a 'popularity contest'.

A 'fair vote for president' is not really what I'd call the electoral college. Why would my vote count for more in Wyoming than Florida? It's not consistent either. Large states still have way more power, so I'm not sure what that's solving.

Okay, glad we can agree on swing states. How could that change under the current system, though? I guess small population states are never going to be as popular for campaigning as places where you can go visit 20x the population in just one city.

The left complains about this system because gives conservatives power disproportionate to their actual numbers, while we are still nominally a democracy. If there was anything like reasonable bipartisan legislative work, it might be better, but things have become so contentious. And yes, I don't expect to see it change because conservative states would have to choose to give up power.

[+] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] Zeppo 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You are still missing who votes. You seem to think you vote, but it is really the state that votes.

Uh... no, that's my point. If electors are selected by a popular vote, that's the vote. Very rare for electors to switch candidates.

This states thing is a questionable proxy system. We are sort of, theoretically, a republic of states. Sure. However, it's a flawed system that isn't quite relevant to how the country has developed. It's silly to act like a system invented 250 years ago will always be the best or most effective. The founders of the country didn't expect for the systems to never change. They also didn't expect a party duopoly and hoped to avoid the current situation.

Anyway, it's clearly not purely a 'states vote' situation since it votes are weighed by population. A pure one state, one vote situation would be like that. Texas Republicans recently had a brilliant idea like that where each county would have one vote, which is obviously absurdly anti-democratic - imagine 4 million people in Houston having the same vote as 72 people in some tiny county.